What to do with this swag. Options

[Jack Kain]

During my groups last adventure, we had a climatic chase through the city streets whlie being followed by an Ares Dragon chopper. Its door was open and had a gunner with a rather large heavy weapon I don't recall what. (I'm sure some of you will know what adventure that was)

Well I won't go into how it happend. But the chopper that was chasing us. Is now OUR chopper.
Now the chopper is worth 495,000 nuyen.
At a fenced value of 30% it come to 148500 Nuyen. A large chunk of change.
Now we could keep it, but a chopper isn't actually useful on most runs. As we are currently located only in denver. It won't help for geting around, flying over the national borders sounds like a bad idea to me.

So should we sell it or keep it.

[Konsaki]

Remember that big and flashy means noticable. Just have your face try and get more than 30% and hope for the best.

[Jack Kain]

[Ryu]

I´d second the notion of selling the helicopter.

You can easily fly accross national borders in Denver - its the norm rather than an exception due to the number of borders inside the town. My reason is that the runners are better off hiring a suitable heli everytime the actually need one, keeping the 100k+ change for other things.

[Adam]

Or it's the start of a brand new smuggling business... ;-)

[toturi]

[eidolon]

Jack,

Welcome to Dumpshock.

There are some definite perks to having your own chopper, even if it's a get-out-of-Dodge fallback that you keep in a warehouse somewhere. Does your team have a rigger with mechanic contacts? If so, there's lots of stuff you could do to the chopper to make it even more worth keeping.

If that's not an option at all though, you are looking at a pretty good chunk of change. Time for some new 'ware. :cyber:

[Dog]

If border crossings are common for you guys, you might wanna put the funds towards fake id's, or maybe some ECM or ED for whatever vehicles you got now. Or maybe purchase some friends among the guards and whatnot.

Edit: You could negotiate for a higher price than 30%. Some GM's will follow the canon rules (opposed negotiation test, every net success changes the price by 5% of the listed price.) Some will want to purely RP it.

Point of curiosity: Who would you sell it to?

[eidolon]

[lorechaser]

It's going to be really hard to hide a chopper. And expensive if you want to hide it somewhere reasonably secure. I think you're better off 1. Buying a new SIN, highest possible rating and 2. Selling the chopper under that SIN, asap. To an extremely loyal fence. Because someone is going to be pissed when they find out it's on the market....

[eidolon]

Hard to hide? We always just stuck stuff like that in a medium lifestyle- ranked warehouse type building purchased in a bad area like the Barrens, and paid off the local gangers to ignore it and harass anyone that came looking.

OPSEC, the fine art of keeping things a secret by not telling everyone about them. ;)

I'm sure how this is handled varies immensely from game to game, just throwing mine out there.

Lorechaser has a great point about the repercussions possible when the previous owner finds out about a pending sale. Best to buy some spray paint and fix that bad boy up. Maybe add a spoiler. ;)

[Jack Kain]

[eidolon]

[Kyoto Kid]

...try disposing of a 6 engine Soviet Antonov 335 super transport.

Yes, the team in my last campaign had to deal with this.

Not as easy as a Lockheed Titan

[Toptomcat]

If you can't sell it for what you feel is a decent price and can't find a way to hide and maintain it, consider stripping it for weaponry and parts if there's a rigger in the group. Just off the top of my head, the ECM, ECCM, sensors, weapons, and possibly the armor could probably be Max Max'd onto something else.

[Butterblume]

Probably a good idea to sell the chopper to a chop shop. (get it? :rotfl:)

[mfb]

if you don't want to get into the smuggling business, sell the chopper. but like Adam said, it sounds like you've got a nice opportunity to break into smuggling. i mean, you've got a free helicopter, and you're in Denver, the smuggling capital of the continent.

[fistandantilus4....]

Your technomancer can always register a machine sprite or three while you work on building up a pilot skill. And then there's always skill wires as well. The question is do you really have a use for it, or would you be better off with the cash? None of your characters are particularily cash oriented, so it may be best to hang on to it just to lend you some flexibility.

In the mean time, finish off the other team while you're between jobs. If they're the type to take it personally (I would, wouldn't you?) and they're already short a few people, better safe than sorry.

[Jack Kain]

[fistandantilus4....]

well if they're not liekly to come back at you later, no worries.

With the game you guys have going, check with your GM and see if you're likely to branch out and then decide. If not, sell it, buy some new cars with armor, invest in foci, spread some money around time with your face and buy yourself some new friends.

[lorechaser]

Or possibly barter it.

Contact your Fence. Try to negotiate for 40% of the chopper's price in goods.

He may be all over that....

[SpasticTeapot]

I'd rip out anything that could be traced, like most of the avionics. Fence 'em, and upgrade.

Add a small server in the back. (It's an ARES DRAGON. A few 1U servers won't make much difference).

Machine Spirits a Go-Go!

[Kyoto Kid]

[Draconis]

Sell it if you need the money, otherwise keep it safe, keep it hidden. (Right Frank? :D )
Never know when you'll want to plow a chopper full of C4 and being remotely piloted into someone or thing.

[nezumi]

Keep in mind, the Dragon is one of the most common small transport choppers in the SR world. Apparently Ares over produced them and had to dump them at a lower price (according to R3). Which means that a Dragon painted over to look like a boring transport chopper won't turn too many eyes. The big question is how your GM interrupts the rules on air travel. If it won't be too hard to fly without arousing suspicion, I'd keep it. If he's going to require high level SIN checks at every stop point and whatnot, I'd dump it.